Vineyard visits

Organic champagne in the wine cellar of the Raab Vineyard

Chile's Central Valley, where Santiago is situated, enjoys a temperate Mediterranean climate. This means short winters and long, hot, dry summers. It also means ideal conditions for most types of agriculture, which explains why Chile is a top exporter of produce and of course, wine.

Before coming to Chile, my knowledge of wine was..ehh...on the crude side. I knew my way pretty well around the bottom-shelves, the $2-$6 labels, the boxed persuasion. My favorite wine is Pinot Noir because it's easy to drink and I like saying "Pinot Noir". But living in the middle of Chilean wine country and suddenly having to write a feature story on the country's organic wine industry for The Wine Times (a monthly Santiago Times off-shoot), it was time to get viticultured (oh snap did I just wordplay viticulture? I totally fucking did).

In the last couple weeks, I did some hard research. I took notes off of wikipedia articles, memorized wine glossary terms, and of course, visited some vineyards. Through a lucky connection I was able to visit a modest organic vineyard by the coast that specialized in organic champagnes and talked to the owner over a bottle. Through another lucky connection (telling the next-door bike tour company that I would write a profile spotlighting their wine & bike tour for Revolver Magazine [for which I also write] if they let me take their tour for free along with my photographer/friend Loretta), I visited another organic vineyard in the Maipo Valley, also talking to the owner over wine and cheese.

There's still a lot of the grape to bottle process that I don't get. I mean a lot chemistry is involved and I fell asleep through most of that class in high school. But wow, so much to know about the ancient tradition of grape-growing and wine-making. And there's something about vineyard landscapes that I totally fucking love. With the same googly-eyed Thoreau-esque admiration I had for Colombia's Madalena Valley, with its rolling coffee plantations. Corn fields just don't do it for me. But if you can comb the hills with coffee beans and grapes, I'd say there's indescribable beauty in repetitive, monochromatic rows as far as the eye can see. I'll post the Bicicleta Verde wine tour article and organic wine feature story once they're published.

Daniel Raab's organic vineyard. On the other side of the hill is the Pacific Ocean.

Daniel pops open a bottle of his prized champagne. Instead of synthetic fertilizers, he uses manure from the zoo next door. The zoo saves on disposal, Daniel nurtures his terroir, the soil stays chemical-free, everybody wins.

Our first stop on Bicicleta Verde's Bike & Wine tour: Family-owned Cardanal Vineyard in the Maipo Valley

Fermenting tanks at the organic Huelquen Vineyard. Some exhausted cycle-crazy travelers ready to booze it up- straight from the tank spigot
After a long day of wine-tasting and cycling, my photog Loretta, me, our gringo tour guide Mac (who has a very endearing Nashville twang) and a van full of drunk tourists sang along to 70s romance ballads with the windows rolled down.

No seas fomeee, huevon

The guest list---"VIP Golden Section""Who's Tom Jones?"...6 hours later, cracking jokes with Tom Jones and humming "It's not unusual" all day

Last week was a strange one. I'm crashing at the apartment of a couple intern friends on the trendy "Capital Hill" of Santiago. Living in the city has been a pretty stark contrast to living on the farm in Santiago's rural outskirts. Although I miss the farm and its slow days, clean air, and not having to shower every day, my stay in the city has been entertaining to say the least. Especially with good company.

A fellow intern knew one of the roadies for Tom Jones so a bunch of interns and myself met up with TJ and his band at a bar. We got on the guest list for his concert and hung out backstage. The concert was held at the Movistar Arena, which used to be a tennis stadium until die-hard fanatics started ripping out seats and chucking them at the opposing players. In the VIP lounge, I stuffed some complimentary granola bars in my purse. Why am I always the only one who gives a shit that there is FREE FOOD BACK HERE PEOPLE.

After the show we hung out poolside at their hotel after party. There, I ordered a club sandwich, beers, and a screwdriver on the sound guy's tab. The sound guy- Matteo, gave me an impromptu geography quiz because he said my "physiognomy" suggests poor world geography acumen. Well I called his bullshit with my ability to pinpoint the location of (semi)obscure Russian fishing pot Vladivostok. After a few, I got talked into jumping half-naked into the pool, got passively scolded by hotel security before we could, and on the way home I suffered through our taxi driver's 9/11 conspiracy theory lecture right before he hit a cat.

Loretta, me, Laura, and the drummer (for Tom Jones and 20-yr Pink Floyd drummer) on stageDrinks in Bellavista with Tom Jones and crew

Apart from the "Almost Famous"-esque high the other interns and I have been on while the ol' crooner was in town, I've felt pretty unproductive in Santiago. Mostly writing beat articles for the Santiago Times and hangover recovery. Technically I'm not getting any less "work" done in the city than if I were on the farm. I feel slightly more tense in general and lose patience quicker. When my laptop was being exceedingly slow, I folded 5 origami lilies to calm my nerves and keep from throwing the computer out the window. I ripped the first two.

I miss the farm, but I'm enjoying the prevalence of booze and friends to drink with. One of the few things I couldn't bare to see my life without.

My high school friend friend Amy and her sister came to visit me on the farm last weekend. My first guests! Great long conversations, yummy fresh food, red wine, and some tips on biking through New Zealand.

more farm gorgeousnessI gave Amy and Sarah a walking tour of Caleu. We took a shade break at the rodeo .

For letting me crash with them, I made a couple friends (and fellow interns) these bookmarks. Chilean expressions hand-stitched with love: Cachai? - Ya know? Que Fome - That sucks/How lame.

happy valentine's day friends and family <3

Bibimboopoopidoop

Here's another take on the Korean bibimbap, fresh from the farm.

rice
egg
zucchini
carrot
red lettuce
sesame seeds
gouda cheese
lemon
soy sauce
olive oil
salt

~cook rice (lightly salt), for salad chop lettuce, shred carrot, cut cheese into cubes, toss and sprinkle with lemon juice and salt, thinly slice zucchini, on med-heat sautee zucchini in olive oil and salt, when cooked, add dash of soy sauce and sprinkle sesame seeds (take care not to burn seeds!), place salad, zucchini, and rice in bowl in sectioned thirds, top with fried egg. It's likely there will be a bunch of toasty sesame seeds still in the frying pan so scrape those out on top of everything, add bibimbap or siracha(sp?) sauce to taste, enjoy with chopsticks and iced tea with dallop of organic honey from the lady you interviewed for your rodeo feature story whose husband owns a bee farm~

Where am I?/What am I doing?/When will I take my future "seriously"?

Most of you (all 3 or 4 of you) already know I currently live in Chile for a journalism/organic farming internship. At the beginning of last year, as my university career was coming to an end, I felt the impulse to slow that train down.

I love being a student, I love the freedom and forgiveness and benefits the sub-profession affords me. It's not the homework or lectures I love, but the societal recognition that you're young and optimistic enough to be pro-actively discovering and open to discovery. I love the title. I can deal with the borderline poverty and occasional feeling of aimlessness that college often entails. Also, I couldn't register for the thesis seminar required for my history major until the following Spring quarter (this upcoming March), so I had some time to kill. It was senseless to stay in school during the 6 month gap until I could finally take that damn class, wasting money on credits I didn't need. So instead, I got an internship with the Santiago Times, which a good friend and fellow Buenos Aires expat Natalie suggested I apply for. A lot of people don't get why I'm doing this internship if it "has nothing to do with my major" and I want to tell them to fuck off...but instead I recite the following spiel: I've been interested in but ignorant of organic farming/sustainable food production for a while and what better way to learn about it than hands-on and in a foreign country where I can simultaneously improve my Spanish. And though I dropped a possible journalism major my freshman year, I enjoy writing and see the value in acquiring newswriting experience (historians and journalists need to perfect the same skills: investigative research, effective communication to the public, story development, etc.). I'm killing a lot of birds with one stone here. (Or as Argentines would say, "matando dos conejos con un palo", killing two rabbits with one stick).

tempting college life alternative (freshman year, photo cred: Sarah Mollner)

After pulling together earnings from sushi waitressing tips, a salmon cannery stint, and a garage sale, I threw some belongings into my school backpack and started the nearly 4-month trip towards Chile from Baja California. That trip itself was quite the whirlwind. Since I got to Santiago, Chile over two months ago, I've been living on the newspaper editor's small organic farm a couple hours outside of the city, working on the farm and for the English newspaper from there.

To be honest, I can't even remember what compelled me to do this, but it makes perfect sense now. I can confidently say I'm fluent in Spanish, I know how to create and maintain an organic garden and greenhouse, and I have over 40 (and counting) news articles published. All of this while practically on "vacation". After almost 7 months abroad I've spent roughly $3000 (less than $300 since I started living in Chile since I don't pay rent and most of my food is garden-grown). Compared to the more than $6000 (rent not included, which would add another $2000) that would have been spent on two quarters at school (with probably less applicable knowledge attained and higher blood pressure from academic stresses), I think I made the right choice. Am I bragging? Maybe so, but mostly I want to (re-)clarify to myself and the masses why I haven't graduated already. And dammit that's okay.

I currently reside in a tiny, isolated pueblo called Caleu. To give you an idea of where "home" has been lately:

Located in Central Chile northwest of Santiago. Santiago is roughly in the middle of the brown "Region Metropolitana". This is from a little "About Caleu" booklet Carlos lent me.

From the daily bus that takes me from Stgo to Caleu

I live in the Lo Marin part of Caleu- perfectly nestled between two big hills

This is how sparsely populated Caleu is. From Steve's farm you don't see other homes or farms. You see this.

death, she dreamed

my "family tree"

Last night I had a dream. And this dream had meaning. I'm not one to psychoanalyze my dreams (I guess you could say I'm a latent subconscious realist), but every once in a while you have a dream that screams relevant life metaphor. No matter how skeptical you are, you can't help it, the epiphany will not be ignored. The romantic in you sees a message. This was my dream:

My mother, sister, and I were walking up a winding dirt road atop a mountain with a few other people (random travelers I'd met in real life). As with most dreams, there was no provided context as to why we were there or how we got there. We just were. A van was passing by and the other random travelers and myself thumbed for a ride. The van stopped, slid open the door, and as we got in I yelled for my mother and sister to join. My mom shook her head in classic conservative mom fashion, saying hitch-hiking was unsafe, how could I just get in a car with strangers, etc. I rolled my eyes, got in and shut the door, smug with my own adventurous nature that would get me to the unknown destination faster and through such "unconventional" means.

The van was packed with a generic mix of friendly, multi-national travelers. Soon the road narrowed and the winding nonguard-railed path turned fatal (literally). The van was going one mph too fast and one blind turn would find us off the path and yep, falling to our death. The driver let out a deadpan (with a hint of eerie cheerfulness): "Oh, are you serious?" But rather than a rapid shot down to a climactic crash, the van stayed suspended for a few seconds, and proceeded to fall slowly like a drop of molasses a la Alice down the rabbit hole (maybe time slows like this when death is so imminent?). The van was silent, each passenger tacitly viewing their entire lives projected onto the insides of their eyelids. I was the only one in the van without a friend/partner with a hand to hold so I went ballistic for a few seconds in my lonely mind and with dulled reluctance, accepted my fate. As we neared the ground with the same repelled motion as a landing hovercraft, I lit a cigarette, took a drag, and said plainly and calmly to a deaf audience: "I'll miss my family."

Contact.

Wait, we're still alive. Incredible! It's hard for me to recall exactly how the rest of the dream went from here, but I'll describe the end in the same vague way it stands in my memory. We all got out of the van and walked into what seemed like a border crossing. A derelict building with tall ceilings, flickering lights, and sullen, taciturn folk in a giant waiting room. There was an impression of dragged out bureaucracy, but I couldn't be too sure. Everyone who was waiting seemed like they'd been waiting for ages and were now just "waiting" out of habit. It was cold and dark and stank of hopelessness. It was utterly depressing and there the dream ended.

I wonder if people who know me can draw their own conclusions as to what all this nonsense might mean in relation to my life. Is it too obvious? Too ambiguous?

There are dreams where you're like a character in someone else's dream- your actions aren't yours, your thoughts aren't typical of your own personality, as if you were acting out a script by an unseen stenographer. And there are dreams where you control your own character, where you are comparatively more concerned with your role in this imaginary world, you (at least the subconscious hologram of you) give a shit about what's going on (not to be mistaken for lucid dreaming, where you're aware that you are in a dream). In this dream, I took this latter position.

What struck me most, were my supposed last words. At that moment before I thought my life would end, I said something I honestly didn't think I would. And the words left my mouth before the thought even materialized in my (dream self's) mind. Like a premortem reflex. "I'll miss my family." Nevermind the blatant continuity error - that I don't smoke - but that at the end of my short (but I think fairly fulfilling) lifetime, rather than bask in the glory of my meager life accomplishments, or of happy moments I'd spent with friends (with whom I've opened up to and shared much more than my own family members), or that one lie that's haunted me since third grade, the one thing that fell out of my soul was this sentiment. Not only is there the implication that I cherish my family, but that in whatever beyond I was catapulting towards, I recognized the tragedy that they wouldn't be there. Don't get me wrong, I love my mum, my daddy, my two little sisters. Despite minor conflicts we're a pretty loving, functioning unit. But my actions, my general selfishness, affinity for independence, stubborn wanderlust, would suggest they're not really a priority. That I take them for granted. I have for a long time, but lately I've been trying (halfheartedly) to correct this, without sacrificing my goals, which usually involve being away for long periods of time. Which is why the hitch-hiking scene is poignant. I'm chasing adventure and some elusive, undefinable goal but at the displeasure of my family and at the cost of quality time with them. Only to find myself at the terminal result of this reckless chase, alone and missing them. It was a heartbreaking realization. I could only really decipher the end as entering some kind of purgatory...but ehh maybe later.

Families are weird. At least the normal ones are. I've had countless disagreements with my parents and sisters on really everything. I could list in an instant the flaws I self-importantly disapprove of in each of them (which is no doubt reciprocal). But they've been the one constant in my life and that alone is pretty invaluable. All my friendships and ex-boyfriends and lovers and pop idols and literary protagonists and ideological heroes pale in comparison to my family's staying power. Despite my absences, they never go anywhere, and they never let me forget that. Despite my absence, home never leaves me, and I should make a better effort to not let them forget that.

This doesn't mean I'll stop traveling, that the chase has ended. But that dream (I hope) did mark a perspective shift. When I say "I'll miss my family" I don't want it to mean I already missed them.


Sorry to my aloof friends who found the above repulsively over-sentimental. It wuh'nt written for you. *sassy finger zig-zag*

Cut up my family x-mas card (sorry mum)
I was working on random stuff last night and took a moment to think. When I did, I got a good look at my desk and thought what a mess, then- hey this kinda looks cool. I think peoples' workspaces can be pretty interesting. The gradual accumulation of whatnots.

Charizard Sandy Witch

Chard & Egg Sandwich

Maybe my recipes should be called "things to do with eggs and garlic". What can I say, I love my eggs and garlic. Nom nom nom.

bread
chard
garlic
egg
crushed garlic
mustard
olive oil
salt & pep

~chop chard, dice garlic, on low-med heat sautee chard and garlic in olive oil, beat eggs with salt and pep, when chard is limp, add egg and scramble or cook like an omelet, for paste mix crushed garlic and mustard then spread on bread, put chardy egg between slices and enjoy with coffee or iced tea~

chard from the greenhouse!

more Carlos ingenuity. little animals from twigs and pine seed pods.

Pictures of cats.

These are some cats I live with. I'm sorry, this may be my most boring post but these guys are too silly. Normally I fancy myself more of a dog person. I always thought cats were scary, self-entitled, and unpredictable, but these guys are sweethearts. My previous disposition towards cats can be owed to a particularly traumatizing experience when I lived in Buenos Aires a couple years ago.

My roommate had this cat that would go batshit crazy every time I came home, clawing and hissing at me incessantly. The demonic feline could even open doors, smell fear, and probably read minds. It would leap onto my desk and terrorize me while I was doing my homework, and use my legs as scratching posts while I tried to enjoy my damn breakfast in peace. At one point, the hostility came to a matador showdown between my terrified self, the psycho cat and my empty backpack as a bullfighter cape. I was able to coax the beast into my room, shut the door, and tie a cellphone charger cord around its handle and two others to keep the door secure so it couldn't scratch out my eyes and suck my blood. Luckily (for PETA and this stupid cat) my roommate brought the cat to her dad's before I could throw it into a cement mixer.

I made El Capitan (the one-eyed kitten) an eye-patch, but he kept rubbing it off. So yeah, I have a cat eye-patch lying around my room.

Opium rice

Poppy seed rice with fried eggs, green onion and hella garlic
This might look like bland peasant food you'd find in rural China, but trust me, it packs a lot of flavor and makes a satisfying light dinner. Sorry, I'm not too keen on exact measurements. They're arbitrary and preferential.

rice
garlic
2 eggs
green onion
poppy seeds
lemon
olive oil
salt and pep

~cook rice with lightly salted water and a couple table spoons of poppy seeds, chop a bunch of garlic cloves into fatty chunks, on low-med heat fry garlic in olive oil until the kitchen smells awesome then fry eggs + salt&pep, for green onion garnish chop green onion and soak in mix of olive oil, lemon juice and salt, enjoy with chopsticks and a glass of tap water or cheap beer~

~can add/sub eggs for fried tofu, don't corrupt the garlic flavor with overzealous soy sauce additions~

Feliz cumpleaños, sailor.

It was my editor's son(Ray)'s birthday yesterday so I made him this mobile. I had to work with what was lying around: stick, trashed paper, thread, and old paint found in the shed. Before you tell me to wipe the brown off my nose, I'll have you know I've been living with his family on their farm in Chile's Andean foothills for the past two months, so I'd say we're all friends. At first I was afraid the mobile would seem too childish for a 13 year old, but the fact that I wanted it for myself after I'd finished quelled those fears. And apparently Ray is really into sailboats, which I didn't know before making this, so hell yeah.

To really appreciate this thing you need to witness it in flight first-hand, so once again I've provided a crappy video courtesy of my point-and-shoot. Musical accompaniment: Iron and Wine cover Postal Service. Watch the shadows.



...also made another crane mobile for Steve and his wife.

Name that vegetable

Okay, I found some more paint in the garden shed and got a little carried away with this plant marker thing.
Cebolla-Onion

Let's see a few in the garden...

Lechuga-Lettuce

Aji-Chili pepper

Pimenton-Bell pepper

...and yesterday the sky was being amazing. Times like these I wish I had a better camera. And my friends to awe at this with me.

"When you travel, you experience in a very practical way, the act of rebirth......you confront completely new situations,the day passes more slowly......so you are like a baby, just out of the womb......and since all things are new, you see only the beauty in them......and you feel happy to be alive."

-Paulo Coelho

Ham and onion omelette, Rosemary potatz

Ham and Onion Omelet
3 eggs
chopped ham slices
chopped green onion
chopped garlic
salt and pep

~beat eggs with salt & pep, in pan on med heat fry up onion, garlic, ham (in that order) with a little olive oil, pour egg, flip~

Rosemary Garlic Potatoes

chopped potatoes (boiled)
diced garlic
rosemary
salt and pep

~sautee garlic on med-high with olive oil, add (boiled) potats, salt and pep, toss with rosemary, ready when edges are crisp~

Side of red cabbage salad and of course, cranberry juice. Yum!

Hey look, I made some plant markers for the greenhouse...

Let's seem them in action...

Cilantro

Rucula - Arugula

Albahaca - Basil

Zanahoria - Carrot